monster

Recently my life has thrown me a few hurdles to overcome. Life does that on occasion to everyone. Some hurdles are a bit taller than others, but still just a hurdle nonetheless. My approach is always to jump the hurdle and get it out of the way… deal with it. You know? Even if my “jumping the hurdle” isn’t always of a gazelle like quality.

But I get advice, here and there, about how I should try and bury myself in something else… to keep my mind occupied so that I simply move away from the hurdle and continue my life in another direction rather than taking my lumps, scratches and bruises to get over the hurdle and continue my journey in the direction I had originally started out. I generally don’t say much in contradiction because I know they are just trying to help. But it always confuses me a bit. It has always been my experience that if you avoid a hurdle you can’t finish the race… eventually you will have to jump the hurdle. I think it is easier when you know why that hurdle is there in the first place…

Inspired by Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Halloween special. When I was a kid I looked forward to watching that cartoon every year. It was one of my favorites!

Anyway, I wanted to record the painting process but I had some problems during the process and didn’t feel like starting over. I did manage to record the sketch. It is on YouTube. The sketch and painting were done in MyPaint using a Wacom Intuos 5.

When I was younger, 14 to 24, I used to work on cars quite a bit. A friend and I almost always had a project, rebuilding an engine or simply some modification that needed to be done. Therefore, cars were a large part of my life and I did a lot of drawing cars, trucks, etc. During that time I used to love looking through and reading George Trosley’s CARtoons magazine. So, naturally I was also drawing my own CARtoons.

However, there came a time when cars, didn’t play such a roll in my life and I, as a result, stopped drawing CARtoons. Well, I have recently rediscovered my love for illustrating these caricatured automobiles and pushed out this illustration of a 1979 Toyota HiLux 4X4 pickup truck. Or as I called it, “HighLux”.

I just started sketching it and couldn’t stop. It was very fun so I will probably do more CARtooning in the future! So, look forward to it!

Here’s my latest “Bad” illustration! This is “Bad to the Bone” another addition to my “Bad” series of children (so far just girls) in cooperation with a monster like being. My working title, all of about 1 hour, was “Just Bad”. Well, obviously that didn’t stick. It was only my working title until I figured out what monster would be behind the little girl. This was drawn and painted in MyPaint and Photoshop using a Wacom Intuos 5 graphic tablet.

They contacted me on August 13th and asked if I would mind them publishing the “Bad Monster” painting. And of course I was like, “How much is it worth to you?”… and they didn’t reply any more…

=0P (just kidding)

No, seriously, I was excited! I prepared all the files, sent the copy release, and asked when it would be published and where I could purchase additional copies… and nothing. No Joke. I checked issue 90, waited for issue 91, and then I wrote… they replied and said it would be in the next month’s issue… and there it was. It was difficult to not share the news when I heard and actually wait for the magazine to come out… but I did it! Anyway, it’s cool!

Almost a month ago I posted a virtual ink on virtual paper drawing / sketch of a little girl scolding a monster for breaking her doll. When I made the post, I mentioned that it was also possible that I would eventually paint it. Well, I finally did, and here is is. I painted it in MyPaint using a Wacom Intuos 5 and signed and branded it in Photoshop.

This is a digital drawing, virtual ink on virtual paper… if you will, done in MyPaint and Photoshop using a Wacom graphic tablet. It is just one of those things that just flowed from the pen. It is possible it will later become a digital painting, but we’ll see.